SOMETHING IS IN THE AIR AT LEGISLATIVE HALL

By Celia Cohen
Grapevine Political Writer

Legislative Hall was so strange on the first day
back, all that was missing was a hookah-smoking
Caterpillar plopped on the Speaker's Podium and a White
Rabbit hurrying by with a pocket watch and fretting
about being late.

The General Assembly's return to Dover, after a
six-week break for budget hearings, is always a little
disorienting, like waking up from a long winter's nap,
but the startup Tuesday was Alice-in-Wonderland-weird.

It was more than rustiness. It was more than the
customary sense of telescoping time, with the session
recessing amid the grinding cold of January and resuming
with the teasing touch of March. It was more than the
catching-up of people who have not seen one another for
a while.

It was scandal. It was a special election. It was
shifting power.

Political blood was in the air. "Have you ever seen
anything crazier than this year?" asked Rep. Donna D.
Stone, a Dover Republican spending her 13th year in the
House of Representatives.

A great deal of it had to do with Wayne A. Smith. A
great deal more of it had to do with John C. Atkins.

Smith used the break to transform himself from the
House Republican majority leader, one of the most
influential posts in the building, to the top executive
at the Delaware Healthcare Association, an alliance of
the state's most influential medical providers, such as
Christiana Care, Bayhealth and Beebe.

Instead of serving as the legislative maestro
upstairs, Smith was elbow-to-elbow downstairs, at a
table outside the snack bar, with the lobbyists who do
their orchestration offstage. He was the new guy, but he
was no rookie, and they made room for him.

The legislature seemed to be caught in a time warp.
The House and the Senate were praying over Smith, with
Republican Rep. Joseph W. Booth and Democratic Sen.
Margaret Rose Henry both mentioning his new incarnation
as they gave the opening prayers in their chambers,
while the Senate also was reading in delayed
correspondence from Smith, asking to be added as a
sponsor to some bills.

"Those communications seem to be outdated," quipped
Lt. Gov. John C. Carney Jr., the Democrat who presides
over the Senate.

Smith's resignation set off chain reactions. The
House Republicans' prime purpose of the day was to
replace him as majority leader. After they voted in Rep.
Richard C. Cathcart, who won a three-way race against
Reps. Gregory F. Lavelle and Pamela S. Maier, it meant
that House Speaker Terry R. Spence has to appoint
someone to take over for Cathcart as the Joint Finance
Committee co-chair, the most coveted committee
assignment there is.

Cathcart challenged Smith for majority leader at the
beginning of the session and fell short, but now he had
it. An election delayed was not an election denied.

The House has not seen such upheaval in 20 years,
although it was even more shocking back then. On a a
single day in July 1987, the House Republicans met to
choose a new majority leader after state Rep. William A.
Oberle Jr., who remains in the chamber to this day,
stepped down in mid-session, and hours later, Speaker B.
Bradford Barnes keeled over at his Bridgeville home and
died.

Cathcart's departure from the Joint Finance Committee
left a vacancy not just for co-chair but for a spot on
the budget-writing panel.

"Guess who's asking?" said Pam Maier, making a quick
pilgrimage to Spence's office to put her name in for the
seat after she lost out for majority leader. If nothing
else, she got a hug.

Spence said he would take a day or two to make up his
mind about the Joint Finance Committee positions. In the
meantime, he also has another major decision to make. It
is the speaker's responsibility under state law to call
for the special election replacing Smith in the
Brandywine Hundred district he represented since 1990.

The parties are ready to go. The Republicans'
candidate is James T. Bowers, a Verizon sales manager
who lives next door to Smith, and the Democrats' is
Bryon H. Short, who has a small-scale neighborhood
redevelopment business and used to be an aide to U.S.
Sen. Thomas R. Carper when he was a congressman and
governor.

All the parties need now is a date. It helped to make
Spence's office a busy place with John D. Daniello, the
Democratic state chair, among the callers. There is a
good possibility the special election will be held
Saturday, April 14. It could come the following
Saturday, April 21, but the later date could intrude
upon election officials' preparation for a referendum on
Tuesday, April 24, in the Brandywine School District.

The special election has injected considerable
jitteriness into the session. The Republicans are
clinging to a 23-18 margin in the House, their only base
with the governorship and the Senate in Democratic
hands. The Republican majority is expected to be
threatened in 2008, and the party dares not put itself
in further jeopardy with the loss of a district it ought
to hold.

Even with the special election, nothing has
complicated the workings of Legislative Hall as much as
Rep. John Atkins, R-Probation.

Atkins is the subject of a House Ethics Committee
report, released over the break. It charges him with
bringing the chamber into disrepute by throwing his
influence around in the early hours of Oct. 29 during a
traffic stop in Ocean City, Md., and an arrest for a
fight with his wife in Millsboro. Atkins also badgered
the Attorney General's Office and the judiciary,
although the report did not get into it.

Legislative Hall was buzzing with speculation that
Atkins was going to appear on WGMD radio, a downstate
station that was broadcasting from the building, with
some sort of expose.

"It would make me look like an angel," Atkins said.
He hung around the broadcast table, but he never did go
on. Maybe another day, he said.